Engineering Hall
The original buildings preceding Order purchase of the property had been several generations of simple homes or reception-like buildings which had sometimes, but not always, conjoined the Chapel, and which served the Jesuit monks who serviced the area and the Chapel for receiving, food storage and preparation, and entertaining. Throughout the eighteenth century, the Jesuit compound suffered from declining populations--both of the general Brig-Glis community and its outlying areas as well as of the Jesuit clergy. The Chapel was used more to serve the resident and itinerant Jesuits--the former who acted more as monks and servants to the local poor, the latter who were often in trouble and on the run--especially during the periods of covert and overt Papal "suppression" and persecution (1740-1815)--and who, therefore, seldom stayed long.
The buildings on site of the nearly two acres of what are now Engineering Hall and Aubrey Hall in 1806 included a small two-story rectory with kitchens and animal husbandry stable--a dilapidated, single storied hovel with a barely functioning roof and the dormitory style monastic residence hall at the south property line where Aubrey Hall would be.
Like its sister buildings, Aubrey and Châtelaine halls, Facilities (later "Engineering") Hall was constructed with a thick, heavy stone and concrete wall construction starting with a wide foundational base of nearly two meters in thickness, which then tapered to a thickness of just less than a meter by the time it reached the roof line. Unintentionally strong enough to serve as battlements, the Lyonnaise builder hired to construct the school's initial buildings had a background in Burgundian barn and manor house construction and thus built for durabilité, fonctionnalité et longévité. Windows on the outer walls were minimal (almost castle-like) where as the 1881 remodel yielded the ornate, two-story interior height of Gothic flamboyant interior that became the modern Dining Hall. The snug, energy-efficient living quarters of the second floor were pretty much the same from original construction in 1808 to the present with the main difference being their having been abandoned as primary residential facilities and serving more as gathering/meeting rooms for student and community groups and clubs.
For the first three decades of the school's operation, Facilities Hall's ground floor served as a hot water heat delivery plant for Aubrey Hall as well as for a staging area for the seemingly unending on-campus construction projects. When Aubrey Hall was finally completed and all roofing and windowing issues resolved, the main floor of Facilities Hall was cleared and given focus for its retro-fitting to create the original Dining Hall with its kitchen and food service quarters between it and the boiler rooms. Until the completion of Aubrey Hall, the school's kitchens had remained in Merchant House (where basement catchment systems provided storage for spring and rain water as well as grey-water/sewage)--though showerrooms at the south end of Facilities Hall had been made available to the student residences as early as the spring of 1808.
In an uniquely ahead-of-its-time engineering feat, the original construction design of the campus quad had incorporated a sub-floor heat transfer system in which water from the Facilities Hall boilers was circulated through a circuitous in-floor piping system throughout both Facilities Hall, Aubrey Hall, and even into some of the main flooring of Châtelaine Hall.
With another modernization in the 1920s, the kitchens and a first set of shower and communal bathrooms received an upgrade on either side of a refurbished boiler system. A second set of shower-bathrooms was then added at the Châtelaine Hall corner of Aubrey Hall when a new, "modernized," large boiler system was installed in 1957.
The 1957 remodeling merely updated the kitchen facilities as well as the capacity and delivery system of hot water to the bath- and shower-rooms at the south corners of the campus in Aubrey Hall--in particular, to the new bath and shower rooms at the east end of Aubrey Hall.
The original buildings preceding Order purchase of the property had been several generations of simple homes or reception-like buildings which had sometimes, but not always, conjoined the Chapel, and which served the Jesuit monks who serviced the area and the Chapel for receiving, food storage and preparation, and entertaining. Throughout the eighteenth century, the Jesuit compound suffered from declining populations--both of the general Brig-Glis community and its outlying areas as well as of the Jesuit clergy. The Chapel was used more to serve the resident and itinerant Jesuits--the former who acted more as monks and servants to the local poor, the latter who were often in trouble and on the run--especially during the periods of covert and overt Papal "suppression" and persecution (1740-1815)--and who, therefore, seldom stayed long.
The buildings on site of the nearly two acres of what are now Engineering Hall and Aubrey Hall in 1806 included a small two-story rectory with kitchens and animal husbandry stable--a dilapidated, single storied hovel with a barely functioning roof and the dormitory style monastic residence hall at the south property line where Aubrey Hall would be.
Like its sister buildings, Aubrey and Châtelaine halls, Facilities (later "Engineering") Hall was constructed with a thick, heavy stone and concrete wall construction starting with a wide foundational base of nearly two meters in thickness, which then tapered to a thickness of just less than a meter by the time it reached the roof line. Unintentionally strong enough to serve as battlements, the Lyonnaise builder hired to construct the school's initial buildings had a background in Burgundian barn and manor house construction and thus built for durabilité, fonctionnalité et longévité. Windows on the outer walls were minimal (almost castle-like) where as the 1881 remodel yielded the ornate, two-story interior height of Gothic flamboyant interior that became the modern Dining Hall. The snug, energy-efficient living quarters of the second floor were pretty much the same from original construction in 1808 to the present with the main difference being their having been abandoned as primary residential facilities and serving more as gathering/meeting rooms for student and community groups and clubs.
For the first three decades of the school's operation, Facilities Hall's ground floor served as a hot water heat delivery plant for Aubrey Hall as well as for a staging area for the seemingly unending on-campus construction projects. When Aubrey Hall was finally completed and all roofing and windowing issues resolved, the main floor of Facilities Hall was cleared and given focus for its retro-fitting to create the original Dining Hall with its kitchen and food service quarters between it and the boiler rooms. Until the completion of Aubrey Hall, the school's kitchens had remained in Merchant House (where basement catchment systems provided storage for spring and rain water as well as grey-water/sewage)--though showerrooms at the south end of Facilities Hall had been made available to the student residences as early as the spring of 1808.
In an uniquely ahead-of-its-time engineering feat, the original construction design of the campus quad had incorporated a sub-floor heat transfer system in which water from the Facilities Hall boilers was circulated through a circuitous in-floor piping system throughout both Facilities Hall, Aubrey Hall, and even into some of the main flooring of Châtelaine Hall.
With another modernization in the 1920s, the kitchens and a first set of shower and communal bathrooms received an upgrade on either side of a refurbished boiler system. A second set of shower-bathrooms was then added at the Châtelaine Hall corner of Aubrey Hall when a new, "modernized," large boiler system was installed in 1957.
The 1957 remodeling merely updated the kitchen facilities as well as the capacity and delivery system of hot water to the bath- and shower-rooms at the south corners of the campus in Aubrey Hall--in particular, to the new bath and shower rooms at the east end of Aubrey Hall.
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